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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
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Level 20 Gear Grind is Ruining Ashes
yellowtwo
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
in Artisanship
The biggest change that frustrated people walking into P2.5 was the difference in gearing up. In P2, players farmed bosses for fairly reliable drops, gathered or traded for materials to make their gear, and ran caravans to enchant that gear up. In P2.5, you farmed level 25 bosses (which are specifically designed to drop mostly crafting materials) until you had you gear, then waited for 2 months for the Journeyman Tables to be up.
Before the gear changes at the end of P2, level 0 (novice) and level 10 (apprentice) crafting provided BIS items to players. Crafting was incentivized in every 'gear phase' of the game because enchanting was strong enough on armor / accessories that the enchanting scrolls at your tier of gear determined what was best.
These were the 'gear phases' of P2
No Crafting Tables (P2)
- Level 25 drops, low level accessories, and some (very few) low level armor are all BiS, but the low level gear requires enchanting to outshine higher level pieces
Apprentice Tables (P2)
- Level 10 armor and accessories are BIS are a pretty big upgrade- you can enchant them but it's not cheap, encouraging you to interact with crafts early on and run caravans often. Some legendary level 10 weapons are a decent upgrade from your uncommon or blue level 20 weapon, but it's nothing huge and very expensive, a chase item.
Journeyman Tables (P2)
- Crafted Level 20 armor and accessories are BIS and a decent upgrade, but only if they are crafted at high rarities and enchanted a few times, which is extremely costly. Upgrading your weapons is a no brainer because weapons are better even without enchanting them up.
THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS SO MUCH WORSE THAN THIS because the crafting is squished mostly to the end (except for jewelry and consumes). This will be what the system looks like in P3.
No Crafting Tables (P3)
- Level 25 drops are BIS (+8 enchanted legendary level 0 gear can never compete)
Apprentice Tables (P3)
- Level 25 drops are BIS, there might be 3-4 accessories that are lower level, but with quality will outshine the low rarity level 20 gear, but it's ONLY accessories, and there are very few of them (very little enchanting or crafting, even if it is available because of how little it does)
Journeyman Tables (P3)
- Level 25 crafted armor and especially weapons is an INSANE upgrade over anything else available, enchanting is difficult but probably worthwhile on high level gear, but only after every other item is replaced
What Intrepid Should Do
- +8 enchanted, high rarity Novice items should be better than uncommon level 10 items in general
- +8 enchanted, high rarity Apprentice items should be better than uncommon level 20 items in general
- +8 enchanted, high rarity Journeyman gear will be a sizeable upgrade over your +8 high rarity Apprentice items
please increase the impact of enchanting and readjust the stats/scaling of items so that the current available crafting tier is the best gear available until the next tier is unlocked
WHY?
If the best available items and weapons are whatever you can currently craft and enchant to +8, you're directly encouraging players to interact with more systems and players, instead of incentivizing them to grind in Gravepeak for 2 days straight against 4 other groups trying to go for a 5% chance at the item you want dropping, seeing it drop, and losing to it to one of the 4 physical users in your group.
The above situation is not very fun and it's the vast majority of game if you're chasing the carrot.
Not to mention it ruins most crafting for months: the armor and weapons crafters are useless until the very end; crafts that require dozens of hours of gathering and processing and crafting DO NOT GIVE ANYTHING MEANINGFUL until months into the server with journeyman crafting.
Even when Endgame crafting comes along, it will feel worse because you have to replace basically every piece of gear as fast as possible. Even without enchanting the items are nearly twice as good in every single slot from the uncommon's you were upgrading from.
In the incremental system, the one P2 was closer to- it was a tough decision to get rid of enchanted legendary armor that was providing you meaningful set bonuses: the new item it wasn't an upgrade without a few enchants so even the rich players replaced pieces slowly and one by one, making sure they had enough gold to buy consumes, repair, and make money, while trying to build up enough rare materials and enchanting scrolls to make the journeyman piece worthwhile.
tldr; low level crafting should matter, farming 5% chance gear drops at level 25 should be directly disincentivized: enchanting being powerful is one way of fixing that and tying progression to table level, but regardless of the method PLEASE MAKE LOW LEVEL CRAFTING RELEVANT AGAIN AND DONT FORCE PEOPLE TO GRIND FOR 400 HOURS FOR GREENS IN POIS FROM DAY 1 UNTIL 2 MONTHS IN
Before the gear changes at the end of P2, level 0 (novice) and level 10 (apprentice) crafting provided BIS items to players. Crafting was incentivized in every 'gear phase' of the game because enchanting was strong enough on armor / accessories that the enchanting scrolls at your tier of gear determined what was best.
These were the 'gear phases' of P2
No Crafting Tables (P2)
- Level 25 drops, low level accessories, and some (very few) low level armor are all BiS, but the low level gear requires enchanting to outshine higher level pieces
Apprentice Tables (P2)
- Level 10 armor and accessories are BIS are a pretty big upgrade- you can enchant them but it's not cheap, encouraging you to interact with crafts early on and run caravans often. Some legendary level 10 weapons are a decent upgrade from your uncommon or blue level 20 weapon, but it's nothing huge and very expensive, a chase item.
Journeyman Tables (P2)
- Crafted Level 20 armor and accessories are BIS and a decent upgrade, but only if they are crafted at high rarities and enchanted a few times, which is extremely costly. Upgrading your weapons is a no brainer because weapons are better even without enchanting them up.
THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS SO MUCH WORSE THAN THIS because the crafting is squished mostly to the end (except for jewelry and consumes). This will be what the system looks like in P3.
No Crafting Tables (P3)
- Level 25 drops are BIS (+8 enchanted legendary level 0 gear can never compete)
Apprentice Tables (P3)
- Level 25 drops are BIS, there might be 3-4 accessories that are lower level, but with quality will outshine the low rarity level 20 gear, but it's ONLY accessories, and there are very few of them (very little enchanting or crafting, even if it is available because of how little it does)
Journeyman Tables (P3)
- Level 25 crafted armor and especially weapons is an INSANE upgrade over anything else available, enchanting is difficult but probably worthwhile on high level gear, but only after every other item is replaced
What Intrepid Should Do
- +8 enchanted, high rarity Novice items should be better than uncommon level 10 items in general
- +8 enchanted, high rarity Apprentice items should be better than uncommon level 20 items in general
- +8 enchanted, high rarity Journeyman gear will be a sizeable upgrade over your +8 high rarity Apprentice items
please increase the impact of enchanting and readjust the stats/scaling of items so that the current available crafting tier is the best gear available until the next tier is unlocked
WHY?
If the best available items and weapons are whatever you can currently craft and enchant to +8, you're directly encouraging players to interact with more systems and players, instead of incentivizing them to grind in Gravepeak for 2 days straight against 4 other groups trying to go for a 5% chance at the item you want dropping, seeing it drop, and losing to it to one of the 4 physical users in your group.
The above situation is not very fun and it's the vast majority of game if you're chasing the carrot.
Not to mention it ruins most crafting for months: the armor and weapons crafters are useless until the very end; crafts that require dozens of hours of gathering and processing and crafting DO NOT GIVE ANYTHING MEANINGFUL until months into the server with journeyman crafting.
Even when Endgame crafting comes along, it will feel worse because you have to replace basically every piece of gear as fast as possible. Even without enchanting the items are nearly twice as good in every single slot from the uncommon's you were upgrading from.
In the incremental system, the one P2 was closer to- it was a tough decision to get rid of enchanted legendary armor that was providing you meaningful set bonuses: the new item it wasn't an upgrade without a few enchants so even the rich players replaced pieces slowly and one by one, making sure they had enough gold to buy consumes, repair, and make money, while trying to build up enough rare materials and enchanting scrolls to make the journeyman piece worthwhile.
tldr; low level crafting should matter, farming 5% chance gear drops at level 25 should be directly disincentivized: enchanting being powerful is one way of fixing that and tying progression to table level, but regardless of the method PLEASE MAKE LOW LEVEL CRAFTING RELEVANT AGAIN AND DONT FORCE PEOPLE TO GRIND FOR 400 HOURS FOR GREENS IN POIS FROM DAY 1 UNTIL 2 MONTHS IN
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Comments
Not a huge one, not something that needs removing, it's problematic because on one hand, it's meant to give a sense of progression and achievement, and let the Devs control player flow, but...
At the same time, the gaps it creates are larger than anything that anyone can reasonably deal with in terms of bridging them.
The older games still had this problem but they weren't caught in the space where Nostalgia was the driving force for 'how much you can enhance something' (in terms of the number the enchant goes up to).
Why does BDO go up to basically +20? It didn't start that way, they just needed to give full-time players a thing to grind. Why does Throne and Liberty Epic gear enhance to +9 and then +12 on top of that? It would almost be easier (on a Private Server for example) to clamp it to +6.
Why does Ashes stack +8 Enhancing on top of everything else? It's all there to promote a specific Econ slot, but no matter how many times I 'run the numbers' (mostly in my head) I don't see why +5 or +6 isn't where it stops, and yes, that's considering the idea that players like to see numbers go up and therefore if you give them more numbers the numbers can go up more often yay.
But these games all seem to hit a point where they have to stop letting the numbers go up quickly for all but the most invested players, and that brings me back to my reason for reacting to this thread with this observation.
I absolutely understand not enhancing low level gear when you know you will just get higher level gear later, TL resolved this in a roundabout way that I don't like much but it works overall (Green gear has a lower cap altogether and you can break down Blue Enhancing stones to get Green ones in higher quantities).
But because a theoretical +10 Enhanced "Level 10" Gear piece has its improvements split out so much, what happens is that this creates more opportunity for players to avoid the enhancing. That sounds good, but player behaviour tells me it isn't.
Basically if you stop at +6 or so, you can make the 'power gain' per level larger, thereby 'forcing' players to consider it more carefully and understand that. All these games definitely seem to be working from the 'old' style (most posters are probably familiar with it from L2 I guess) where you aren't expected or intended to reach the highest levels of it, but then not adding the deleveling risk.
Nostalgia(?) strikes again.
But, even though I do like L2's system, I do think we could put a limiter on how high people should be able to go. It would also help with pvp power differences, which is always a good thing imo.
There's your "crafted gear is way more valuable" approach w/o overpowering enhancements to the point where it would let people snowball too much.
I think it would be good if we saw a flow of gradual item replacements and gradual enhancements throughout a tier, creating a constant sense of progression that will keep players constantly interacting with the gearing loop
I'm suggesting we directly emulate P2 with a system that, despite it's flaws, did make the game much better in reality: even pvp players were filling out buy orders from nodes to enchanting scrolls.
- people replaced their gear slowly and built it up slowly
- each piece and each enchant felt meaningful and cool
- it promoted gathering and crafting to be the primary method for gear instead of an afterthought
if you're concerned about scaling, don't allow for enchants beyond 8 or maybe even 6 to give much of anything: make it an ultimate gold sink pushing your enchants past "x" level in general and make the reward like current enchanting: less than 1% power per level of enchant